Evaluating Communications To Special Populations

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Formative research findings may reveal special communications needs of the audiences you're trying to reach with prevention information and education. For example, it may be important to tailor content, layout, and use of visuals to the needs of a reader with poor reading and communication skills. What does this mean in concrete terms? Low-literacy experts have identified key principles for developing effective materials for this audience. These principles are summarized in the checklist below. You can use this list as you are developing a new publication and doublechecking product drafts.

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Checklist: Key Principles of Effective Low-Literacy Print Materials
(Gatson and Daniels 1988)

Content/Style

Peer language is used whenever appropriate to increase personal identification and improve readability.

___	The material is interactive and allows for audience involvement.
___	The material presents "how-to" information.
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___	Words are familiar to the reader. Any new words are defined clearly.
___	Sentences are simple, specific, direct, and written in the active voice.
___	Each idea is clear and logically sequenced (according to audience logic).
___	The number of concepts is limited per piece.
___	The material uses concrete examples rather than abstract concepts.
___	The text highlights and summarizes important points.

Layout

___	The material uses advance organizers and headers.
___	Headers use simple and close to text.
___	Layout balances white space with words and illustrations.
___	Text uses upper and lower case letters.
___	Underlining or bolding rather than caps give emphasis.
___	Type style and size of print are easy-to-read; type is at least 12 point.

Visuals

___	Visuals are relevant to text, meaningful to the audience, and appropriately located.
___	Illustrations and photographs are simple and free from clutter and distraction.
___	Visuals use adult rather than childlike images.
___	Illustrations show familiar images that reflect cultural context.
___	Visuals have captions. Each visual illustrates and is directly related to one message.
___	Different illustration styles, such as photographs, shaded line drawings, and simple line drawings, are pretested with the audience to determine which is understood best.
___	Cues, such as circles or arrows, point out key information.
___	Colors used are appealing to the audience (as determined by pretesting).

Readability

___	Readability analysis is done to determine reading level.

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